Sweetgrass asked

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The National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation hosted Blueprint for the Future, an Aboriginal youth conference held Feb. 10 in Edmonton. Alberta Sweetgrass was onsite to ask the young people:

What did you gain by attending the Blueprint for the Future conference?

Getting information about lots of careers, watching the musicians perform, everything is pretty cool. There is a lot of opportunity for Aboriginal people.

How important it is to get a career, to go to school and to learn that there is lots of jobs and opportunities for Aboriginal people to check out. How important it is to have a bright future. I know that I'm still young, but I should still think about my future.

I was really interested in joining the military always. I went to the military booth and the lady there gave me a lot of information about the program. I wanted and I found a lot of information about another program.

I learned about all these different trades and it made me think about new jobs out there and made me start to think about changing my career goal.

-Kyle Bayha, 15, Deline N.W.T.

That there are so many opportunities to explore and that there are many different career paths to look at. I met a lot of people and I would recommend everyone to take part in this conference.

-Jesse Evans, 15, Fort Smith, N.W.T.

This conference is really good. It is giving Aboriginal people a chance for more education choices, to get jobs one day. There are a lot of different things to check out, like the army booth or a career in computers or if you want to be a mechanic.

-Joshua Logan, 13, Goodfish Lake